Costume and Identity

This paper was presented during the first Rubenianum Work-in-Progress Workshop organised the 20 february 20.

The purpose of this paper is to present my initial hypotheses for answering the question of the role of exoticism in the expression of individuality in the 17th and 18th centuries. Through painted portraits with various exotic objects (porcelain, Persian carpets, oriental costumes, etc.) I will question the aesthetic, social and cultural functions of these objects. The dialectic of reality/representation will also be considered.

Cette communication a été présentée dans le cadre du colloque "Portraits et représentations des anciens Pays-Bas (XVIe - XVIIe siècles)" organisé par le CREHS et l'Université d'Artois les 8 et 9 novembre 2018. Les actes du colloque feront l'objet d'une publication.

Les taillades, vaste gamme d’incisions opérées sur les étoffes, sont un reflet de l’impact de la réglementation protocolaire et somptuaire sur la créativité des tailleurs pour garantir l’originalité de paraître de leur noble clientèle. Alors, quand Christoph Amberger portraiture Charles Quint en 1532 avec une paire de gants dont un seul est entaillé, il crée une iconographie qui pose la question des frontières entre image de mode et illusion picturale et interroge les enjeux de cette effigie pour présenter l’empereur à la société de cour.

Carved and painted onto wood, stone, bone, animal skins or metal, woven and knit into cloth, material culture from Northwest Coast Native peoples has historically been a one-of-a-kind iteration and a declaration of of familial rights and privileges.  These items adorned public and private spaces, including the body, and were traditionally produced by hand.  In recent years, some designs have been serialized and mass produced through new technologies like silk screen and digital printing, adorning everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts, sunglasses, jewelry and other garments (Roth 2012; Roth 2015). This chapter explores the history of Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations specifically and analyzes their distinctive aesthetics and design practice through the lens of fashion theory.  The chapter concludes with a discussion of contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth designers and the circulation of their work.  I ask: how does fashion operate within Nuu-chah-nulth social organization and how has ongoing colonialism and hybridization of prestige and capitalist economies transformed Nuu-chah-nulth fashion systems and design ideas? The findings discussed in this chapter draw from ongoing ethnographic research (beginning in October 2009) and archival- and museum-based research at both major and minor institutional repositories in the United States, Canada, Germany and England.

Étude approfondie de l’iconographie textile et vestimentaire du portrait de François Ier peint par Jean Clouet afin de proposer une relecture d’une herméneutique plus complexe que ne l’ont laissé penser les recherches fondamentales de Cécile Scailliérez. Riche de découvertes inédites quant à l’habillement du portrait, c’est à la fois sa fonction, son commanditaire et sa datation qui ont pu être précisés.

Contents:

PART I: THE CULTURES OF FASHION: Moda and moderno; The Book of the
Courtier and the discourse on fashion: Sprezzatura, gender, ‘national
identity’. PART II: THE FABRIC OF CITIES: NATIONS, EMPIRE IN COSTUME BOOKS
BY CESARE VECELLIO AND GIACOMO FRANCO: Mapping the world: dress in
Cesare Vecellio’s costume books (1590, 1598); Power, history and
dress in Giacomo Franco’s costume plates (1610–1614). PART III:
BEYOND SPREZZATURA: FASHION AS EXCESS: Sister Arcangela Tarabotti:
hair, wigs and other vices; La moda and its technologies: Agostino
Lampugnani’s La Carozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire e usanze alla
moda (The rented carriage or of clothing and fashionable habits,
1648–1650). Bibliography; Index.
Includes 8 color and 48 b&w illustrations
June 2014 278 pages
Hardback 978-1-4724-1170-9 $109.95 $87.96*
ebook PDF 978-1-4724-3603-0
ebook ePUB 978-1-4724-3604-7
www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472411709
“Eugenia Paulicelli presents a convincing argument for the crucial
signifi cance of clothing and fashion in the mentalities of early modern
Europe; her book is richly informed by the research of economic,
social, and feminist historians, historians of dress, and by her own
alertness to the links between past and present in the ways that dress
is presented today. Her narrative incorporates close readings of a wide
and interesting array of early modern writings, and offers a wealth of
intriguing examples—the fashionable rosary, the mustachioed gallant,
the revolver-toting Frenchwoman—as well as possibilities for further
work in the fi eld.”
—Ann Rosalind Jones, Smith College
“In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fashion came to
characterize a ‘modern’ new world, one in which changes in shapes,
materials, colors and manners had to be recognized and understood.
Eugenia Paulicelli’s book is a spectacular investigation of the discourse
of fashion in early modern Italy, from Baldassarre Castiglione toz Cesare
Vecellio, to Arcangela Tarabotti. In this book you will fi nd yourself
immersed in an early modern society obsessed with civility, love, vice,
dissimulation and, of course, fashion.”
—Giorgio Riello, University of Warwick
The fi rst comprehensive study on the role of Italian fashion and Italian
literature, this book emphasizes the centrality of Italian literature and
culture for understanding modern theories of fashion and gauging
its impact in the shaping of codes of civility and taste in Europe
and the West. Using literature to uncover what has been called
the “animatedness of clothing,” the author explores the political
meanings that clothing produces in public space.
ASHGATE PO Box 2225 • W illiston VT 05495-2225 USA • 1-800-535-9544 • [email protected]
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Carmen Tórtola Valencia (1882-1955) was a famous performer of Oriental dances and freestyle. She was admired by artists and intellectuals and was very popular at the beginning of the 20th century (1908-1930). Tórtola Valencia was a highly-educated woman and collected all kinds of objects. She used costumes as artistic expression to create her choreographies and the image of a liberated and modern woman. During her career as a dancer, she worked with artists like Zuloaga, Ismael Smith, Beltrán Masses, Penagos, Néstor, José Zamora, some of whom collaborated with her in creating her dance costumes and choreographies. Her composition of La Tirana was used as the advertising image of the perfume La Maja, marketed by Myrurgia.
The lace collection owned by the Col·legi de l’Art Major de la Seda in Barcelona, now at the Museu d’Arenys de Mar, the textile samples collection at the Centre de Documentació del Museu Tèxtil and the dancer’s costumes and graphic and photography documentation at the Centre de Documentació i Museu de les Arts Escèniques can help us study how Tórtola Valencia created her characters.

When we meet a character in a performance, the implicit understanding is that they have existed until the point where we join their journey and will continue existing after we leave them. Their clothing tells a hi/story to the audience before we hear them speak and before any action takes place. As a Costume Designer and Lecturer, my awareness of costuming as an anthropological practice has led me to explore these principles using myself as the subject of scrutiny. For one year I am logging every clothing combination I go through along with memories, prices, locations and dates etc. in order to explore the sub/conscious clothing decisions I make and the stories, embedded in my clothes, that I am surrounded by every day. What does my wardrobe mean to me inwardly and reveal to my audience outwardly, and how does this ‘me-search’ extend my artistic practice?

The Wear Project will be a visual archive, a teaching tool, and a foundation for further academic research/writing through the questions it raises about storytelling, memory, dress and audience: a personal interrogation generating a critical framework for understanding the dramaturgical significance of costume. I welcome any interest, suggestions, questions, provocations, conversations or counter-projects that could lead my research, costume design or performance related teaching in general into unexplored areas. The Wear Project is available for anyone to view or use on flickr at http://bit.ly/1kAYv74

Con questo libro si apre la serie di cahiers ideata da Alessandro Saggioro e dedicata alla “Simbologia del vestire”. Lo scopo di questa prima monografia è duplice. Da un lato, definire la cornice metodologica all’interno della quale interpretare le logiche vestimentarie. Dall’altra, fornire una debita strumentazione ermeneutica costituita da «parole chiave» – corpo, identità, simbolo, vestito, nudità, mito, rito – per mezzo delle quali rinvenire la valenza culturale, simbolica e religiosa assunta dagli atti del vestirsi e dello spogliarsi. Cornice e strumentazione che non vanno però separate dallo sfondo operativo natura-cultura sul quale agiscono, conferendo loro peculiare valore disciplinare.

Comment éviter les pièges de la binarité lorsqu'on est un costumier trans ? Je traverse dans cette recherche les liens entre les textiles et les binarités structurelles (homme/femme, hétérosexuel/homosexuel, sain/malade). Il s'agit en premier lieu de comprendre en quoi l'histoire de la médecine a construit ces binarités. Ensuite, j'explore les solutions que les théories féministes des sciences et des techniques apportent, pour les mettre à l'épreuve de ma pratique textile.

The relationship between photographer and subject in nineteenth-century photographs of Afghanistan operates as a component of identity construction. To date, this interaction is theorized in terms of power between the photographer and the colonial apparatus and labels the image as orientalist, colonializing, and ethnographic. I propose an additional perspective that places consumer interests in costume at the forefront of image construction. While Western photographers have left us with a perception of nineteenth-century Afghanistan as an intersection between British occupied India and Russia, the social economic impetus of these images require further analysis. An examination of British cultural and photographic practices reveals the role clothes play in the creation of the ethnic ‘type.’ My research addresses these principal themes: the continuities between photographic and pre-photographic visualities; the relationship between European cultural attitudes, the creation of costume books, and reception of commercial photography; how visual information was repurposed and influenced the development of anthropology as a discipline. The importance of studying costume and costume books in the nineteenth century is instrumental to understanding Europe’s transition to a culture focused on classification and commodification. Costume books not only allowed for the creation of a consumable ‘type’ in photography, and permit us to examine the actual mechanics of commodification.

Clothing and paintings maintain an inescapable capability of conveying a message. Even the lack of clothing within a certain context can have a profound impact on both the viewer, and subject being viewed. Solidifying a message through dress and ornamentation relies on multiple factors: the political and social context in which someone is adorned, the nature of the individual wearing a garment or accessory, and the methods of documentation used to convey dress for later viewing. The importance of proper documentations requires careful consideration on the part of the wearer to be highly cognizant of his or her environment, and the audiences of second-hand documentation. In 1995 British designer Vivienne Westood poignantly acknowledged how changes in costume are both a reaction to, and anticipation of visual representation:

Culture consists of behavioural patterns, explicit and implicit, constituting the characteristic attainment of human collectives. Acquired and transmitted by symbols, the vital core of culture is composed of traditional ideas and their attached values. And cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artefacts and intangible attributes of a group or society which are inherited through generations, preserved in the present and bestowed for the profit of future generations. As culture contains its embodiments in artefacts, costume culture is an excellent example. Hanbok, Korean traditional clothing, was established as a part of the single living culture, affected by the geography and climate of the Korean peninsula. It has passed from the past to present, boasting beautiful curved lines and vivid colours in accord with the yin-yang theory. My paper underlines the importance of Hanbok as Korean identity through the design elements (line/colour) appeared in the county's intangible heritages inscribed at UNESCO.

Carved and painted onto wood, stone, bone, animal skins, or metal, or woven and knitted into cloth, the material culture from Northwest Coast Native peoples has historically been a one-of-a-kind iteration and a declaration of familial rights and privileges. These items have adorned public and private spaces, including the body, and were traditionally produced by hand. In recent years, some designs have been serialized and mass produced through new technologies such as silk screen and digital printing, adorning everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts, sunglasses, jewelry, and other garments (Roth 2012; Roth 2015). This chapter explores the history of Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations specifically and analyzes their distinctive aesthetics and design practice through the lens of fashion theory. The chapter concludes with a discussion of contemporary Nuu-chah-nulth designers and the circulation of their work. I ask: how does fashion operate within Nuu-chah-nulth social organization and how has ongoing colonialism and hybridization of prestige and capitalist economies transformed Nuu-chah-nulth fashion systems and design ideas? The findings discussed in this chapter draw from ongoing ethnographic research (beginning in October 2009) and archival- and museum-based research at both major and minor institutional repositories in the United States, Canada, Germany, and England.

This article explores the ways in which identity politics and women’s political activism directly influenced the development of the female Irish dancing costume between 1917 and 1937, focusing particularly on the emergence and brief adoption of the “kilt and coatee,” a male Celtic Revival costume adapted to the female dancing body. As will be argued, the revival of Irish dance at the turn-of-the-century, coterminous with a period of escalating political tension, militarization, and ultimately, revolution and civil war, resulted in the politicization of dance as a cultural embodiment of Irish Republican Nationalism. Subsequently, the first dancing costume, a style of dress bred to promote a conservative sexual and racial identity, was abandoned in favor of a mode of dress that embodied and commemorated martyred republicans. The article touches upon the influence of “revolutionary women” on Irish dance culture and costuming, suggesting also that the suppression of republican women in the immediate post-revolution period contributed to the decline of the kilt and coatee and the return to heteronormative stability in dancing dress. Further, this paper seeks to contribute to the growing body of material culture scholarship, illustrating the potential of material culture analysis to illuminate marginalized lives and hidden histories.

A collection of scholarly essays on Arthur Penn's 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde. Essays on background, social and historical context, genre, costume, sound, music, and other facets from diverse perspectives by a distinguished group of film scholars. Edited and introduced by Rebecca Martin.

In May 2013, the FSB expelled an American diplomat on the grounds that he was spying for the CIA. Listed among the alleged spy’s suspicious possessions were ‘means of altering appearance’. It was later revealed that this disguise kit contained a variety of wigs and sunglasses. These paraphernalia were so ill-fitting that they seemed to belong in a comedy performance, but they provoked some serious debate. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, former CIA operative, Robert Baer, described the thick-rimmed glasses and stick-on moustaches that he and his colleagues had worn to break up facial contours. The aim of these disguises was to make people remember ‘something other than the face’.
An individual’s identity is bound up in his or face more so than any other body part. Passport photographs, portraits, and other images related to personal identity, tend to feature the face. It is for this reason that criminal photo-fits tend to feature only the head, and why criminals’ disguises concentrate on concealing the face and head. The problem with any mask or facial disguise is that it immediately marks someone out as a wrong-doer. The mere act of wearing a mask may itself be considered morally questionable, as it is a deception of sorts. The ‘mask has come to connote something disingenuous, something false’. It is overtly a disguise. David Napier observes that it is this sense of an incomplete identity that drives audiences to seek out the secret alternative identity hidden underneath. The mask is ‘known to have no inside’ and this ‘invit[es] the audience to peer behind the mask’.
This paper will explore the problem of the mask and its use in disguise. While effective disguise often necessitates the use of a mask (or other artefacts that distort or conceal the face), facial disguises often heighten the observer’s sense of curiosity about the identity beneath. Taking recent and historical examples of physical disguise, the paper will identify why the mask is the cornerstone of disguise, and simultaneously the disguise’s greatest point of vulnerability.

Even though costume has been dressing the performing body since the ancient world, methods for its analysis are yet to be fully explored. Performance Costume draws on the experience of internationally renowned academic researchers and hands-on theatre, film and experimental performance practitioners to set out an alternative vision for exploring costume across time and place. From the actress on the Victorian stage to design for high quality contemporary TV, this text opens up a new awareness and dignity for costume to be considered
in and on its own terms.
Recent research has connected the study of costume with theories of the body and embodiment, design practices and artistic and other forms of collaboration in vital new ways; like fashion and dress, costume is now viewed as an area of dynamic social significance and not simply as a passive reflector of a preconceived social state or practice. Offering new approaches to research on costume, and exploring a wide variety of cultures, settings and performance contexts, Performance Costume reveals fresh insights into the better-known frames of historical, theoretical, practice-based and archival research into costume for performance, and considers it as an active agent for performance-making and a material embodiment of ideas shaped through collaborative creative work.
A genuinely groundbreaking expansion of the field of costume studies, this is an invaluable text for students and researchers of costume, performance, theatre and film studies and design.

Portret -niezwykłe źródło poznania postaci. Odwzorowanie konkretnej rzeczywistości -raz świadomie kształtowanego wizerunku, kiedy indziej obraz widziany subiektywnym okiem artysty. Przedstawienia portretowe w sztuce dawnej miały na celu wywarcie na widzu konkretnego wrażenia -nie zawsze ukazywały faktyczny wygląd fundatorów, ale to, jak chcieli być widziani. Często to nie realizm przedstawienia był najistotniejszy, a oprawa -strój, insygnia, herby, tło -pojedyncze elementy dookreślające modela.

Course Description: This course looks at jewelry throughout history and from around the world. We will explore aesthetics, design, materials, and production techniques across cultures. We will investigate the role of adornment in conveying gender and identity, and also consider cultural perspectives of jewelry as sacred and magical. Prerequisite(s): N/A Co-requisite(s): N/A Learning Goals: Students who successfully complete this course will develop the visual skills and critical vocabulary for identifying, describing, and contextualizing works of jewelry representative of diverse world cultures. Students will develop a critical, interdisciplinary approach to jewelry, incorporating art historical, anthropological, fashion, and identity theory. We will study jewelry, itself, as a primary resource, considering individual elements of jewelry and their incorporation into dress ensembles. In addition, we will consider the representation of jewelry elements and ensembles in art, literature, and contemporary media to better understand its roles in various culture.

The clothing of the female characters from the north-american comic books communicates the identity of the heroine or the villainess. How does the clothing design help to translate the identity of the charactes into the costumes? This paper includes an analysis of different characters from Marvel and DC Comics. The thesis ends with the design of a clothing collection as a practical conclusion of the investigation.

En el género superheroico del cómic norteamericano, la indumentaria de los personajes femeninos comunica la identidad de la heroína o villana. A partir de esto nos preguntamos: ¿Cómo se utilizan los distintos recursos de diseño en la indumentaria de las superheroínas de Marvel y DC para comunicar su identidad heroica? ¿Existen diferencias en la forma de comunicar conceptos entre los personajes de las distintas empresas? Se plantea un análisis del traje de la superheroína, el estudio de los recursos comunicacionales utilizados y, finalmente, el traslado de resultados obtenidos a una propuesta de colección de indumentaria.

Haljine sačuvane u kolekciji srpskog građanskog kostima Muzeja primenjene umetnosti u Beogradu,
koje su pripadnice srpskog građanskog društva nosile kao venčane haljine, ali i u drugim prilikama
vezanim za obred venčanja (npr. veridba), nastale su u periodu između 1878. i 1914. godine. Među
sačuvanim haljinama nalaze se bindali haljine karakteristične za osmanski kostim, zatim haljine
sašivene u Srbiji po uzoru na evropsku modu, kao i haljine sašivene ili kupljene u Evropi (Venecija,
Beč, Pariz). Haljine iz kolekcije, kao nosioci tradicionalnih značenja odeće vezanih za identitet,
ilustruju proces tranzicije srpskog građanskog kostima od gradske nošnje nastale pod osmanskim
uticajem do evropskog modnog kostima. Posmatrane u kontekstu savremene muzeološke prakse
kao muzejski predmeti – dokumenti stvarnosti i nosioci informacija za čitav niz naučnih disciplina –
one postaju i slike vremena u kome su formirani njihovi komunikacijski i funkcionalni aspekti.

The headdresses bequeathed by the desert and its ancestral inhabitants represent an invaluable cultural legacy that must be conserved, studied and exhibited. This is due not only to their aesthetic qualities as objects, to the capacity they once had to imbue their users with distinctive symbolic values,
or even solely to the technical skill required to make them, but also to their revelation of a history of headdresses that precedes by several millennia the Inca invasion, and that is intertwined with the most significant episodes of Northern Chile’s pre-Hispanic cultural development.
Los tocados legados por el desierto y sus habitantes ancestrales constituyen un valioso patrimonio cultural, que merece ser conservado, investigado y difundido. No solo por sus cualidades estéticas como objetos o por la capacidad que alguna vez tuvieron de investir a sus usuarios con valores distintivos, ni siquiera únicamente por la habilidad técnica que se necesitó para confeccionarlos, sino también porque revelan una historia de las prendas cefálicas que antecede en varios milenios a la invasión inkaica y que atraviesa los episodios más significativos del desarrollo cultural prehispánico del norte de Chile.

Japanese contemporary culture, including fashion, has increasingly gained popularity outside Japan, making it a timely topic for both scholarly and wider publics. Most current studies of popular culture focuses on manga, anime, and other such forms of visual culture, and dress and design studies are also emerging as a rapidly growing field. Building on the works of McVeigh (2000), Miller (2006), Slade (2010) and Steele (2010), this book addresses this new interest in an innovative fashion, expanding the significance of dress and delving into a wide range of examples from films, magazines, music videos and literature. By connecting diverse topic areas including dress, gender, media and cultural studies, Japanese Fashion Cultures analyzes the relationship of fashion aesthetics and gender identity within an increasingly interconnected, transnational world.
The book pays particular attention to the relationship of past and present. It examines contemporary Japanese fashion trends that adopt and restyle European historical clothing forms: the Edwardian dandy style, Victorian little girls’ dresses, and the Rococo and Romantic dress typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Japanese fashion culture actively promoted European clothing styles both politically and aesthetically, particularly since the country’s re-engagement with Euro-America in 1868. Throughout this book, I refer to the theory of “format” and “product” articulated by cultural sociologist Keiko Okamura (2003) where a cultural form, in this case Euro-American clothing styles, can be seen as a “format” when accepted globally. This standardized “format” becomes a carrier of the locality of cultures, allowing its “local” characteristics to be visible, measurable, and comparable with that of other cultures. Through this theoretical idea, I explain complex cultural theory using compelling examples. For instance, differences in preferred modes of masculinity and fashionability in Japan and Euro-America will be explained via garments and advertisement campaigns of Dolce and Gabbana. This process will therefore reveal the characteristics both universal and culturally specific to the Japanese context, including the ways in which Japanese men and women engage with fashion today. This poses a challenge to a widely held, often Eurocentric notion that Japanese men and women simply desire to imitate their Euro-American counterparts.

Japanese Fashion Cultures provides comprehensive insights into representations of clothes and gender in a society still poorly understood by outsiders. I dispel the popular misconception that Japan approves of gender inequalities and that women still occupy inferior social positions to men, expressed also in clothing. I argue that using the lens of fashion reveals the complexities of gender relations in Japan. Four contemporary case studies position the argument: young men’s fashion magazines, female performers’ use of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in music video, “Lolita” fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Shimotsuma monogatari (Kamikaze Girls, 2004), and the continuing remarking of “Ivy-League” style in Japan. These four examples are notable for their adoption of historic European and American clothing forms. Their relatively “mainstream” stature in contemporary Japanese culture comes with a “twist” or unconventional characteristics. The “mainstream” standing of these types of popular culture indicates their reach, consumed by a great number of individuals within Japan. Certain qualities they manifest, on the other hand, impose a subtle, almost “delicate” kind of revolt against a set of idées fixes surrounding the relationship between clothes and gender. Using media and cultural texts as a primary source for discussion enables consideration of these complex links between distortion and reality. As Diana Crane (1990) has argued, both are parts of the “real” world where these case studies are first produced.

The first important issue this book raises is that, through negotiating male readers’ desire to attract admirers and to dress for their own pleasure, young men’s fashion magazines endorse the idea that crafting a pleasant look is the foundation of self-assurance and a successful life. Secondly, I show that female Japanese singers allow an accentuation of femininity without necessarily sexualization through the use of Japanese cute (kawaii) aesthetics. The third possibility this book explores is that highly decorative styles of Japanese Lolita fashion should not be read as symbolic of restriction and passivity. The fourth point this book addresses is that, as illustrated by the Japanese embrace of the “Ivy style,” both men and women engage with fashion in very similar ways. This is a major point of difference with the role of fashion historically in Euro-America.

These readings offer novel ways to understand the relationship between gender and dress, which is often blamed for maintaining repressive distinctions between “man” and “woman” in contemporary culture. Ultimately, this book aims to show that the Japanese appropriation of European clothing forms shows that there might be different, and hence less rigid approaches to understanding the relationship between fashion and gender. Japanese refashioning of European clothing concepts, this book argues, offers a compelling case for the implication of the aesthetics of fashion, gender, and cross-culturalism.

“Masafumi Monden's book is a gem. By bringing together and exploring colourful examples from Japan's vibrant street culture and fashion, he artfully demonstrates just how individualistic, innovative, and original the Japanese are. He also dismantles myths and misperceptions about gender relations, sexuality, and social relations in Japan.” –  Brian J. McVeigh, University of Arizona, USA,

“Monden provides a rich and detailed examination of the subtle intricacies of gendering and sexuality in contemporary Japanese fashion. While exploring the extremes of Tokyo street fashion he is able to illuminate some of the mechanism behind the perplexingly divergent ways to be a man or a woman in today's Japan.” –  Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan,

“Masafumi Monden's fascinating and important book, Japanese Fashion Cultures, will be of great interest to everyone interested in fashion, gender, globalization, and youth culture. His research on young Japanese men and their attitudes towards fashion is especially significant, as it calls into question persistent stereotypes about how men and women are assumed to engage with fashion.” –  Valerie Steele, Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at FIT, New York City, USA

“From the possibility of subversion in lace-trimmed Lolita outfits and petite pinafores straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to the enchantments of Milkboy dandyism, Masafumi Monden's Japanese Fashion Cultures offers up a delightful combination of case studies that reveal the very best thinking in fashion theory today.” –  Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri–St. Louis, USA

"Masafumi Monden’s Japanese Fashion Cultures shines a spotlight on many of the looks that brought the world’s attention to an island nation which, like Britain, has consistently punched above its weight in matters of dress and appearance...In Japanese Fashion Cultures you have some most interesting comments about gender and I for one have learned a lot about the less reported (in the West at least) looks for young Japanese males." - Ted Polheums, Author of Streetstyle: From Sidewalk to Catwalk

Funde von Kugelkopfnadeln und Spiralröllchen in Gräbern von Hallstatt sowie bildliche Darstellungen besonders der Situlenkunst waren Ausgangspunkt für experimentalarchäologische Versuche, die eine Rekonstruktion der Haar- und Schleiertracht in der Hallstattzeit zum Ziel hatten. Dazu wurden in mehreren Experimentanordnungen verschiedene Frisuren mit und ohne Schleier gestaltet und auf ihre Vergleichbarkeit mit den Originalfunden überprüft.

The popular American reality television programme RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–) has become well known for its racially diverse cast of contestants; notably, it has featured numerous contestants of Asian descent throughout its first seven seasons. Looking at four of these contestants (namely, Jujubee, Manila Luzon, Raja and Gia Gunn), I ask how Asian American drag queens use costume and other elements of bodily adornment in conjunction with performance in order to construct their drag characters. I explore the ways in which these former contestants embody their intersecting racial, gender and sexual identities through their costuming and performance, both while competing on Drag Race and in their post-Drag Race careers. Ultimately, I argue that Asian American drag queens often engage in an ambivalent rhetoric of race and gender both onstage and on-screen.

From Hollywood classics such as Now Voyager (1942), My Fair Lady (1964), and Pretty Woman (1990) to TV lifestyle programming such as What Not to Wear (2001–07), 10 Years Younger (2004–08), and Gok’s Fashion Fix (2008–09), the makeover narrative is an endlessly repeated and eagerly consumed staple of popular culture. Prevailingly structured around three key components — namely the make-under, the makeover, and the final revelation/affirmation1 — the makeover narrative implies that through the processes of consumption and feminization, the female protagonist will achieve social mobility, popularity, and the “prize” of (a new or rekindled) heterosexual romance. Through their formulaic structure, such texts work to establish the parameters of acceptable feminine appearance, while also offering viewers the vicarious visual pleasure of witnessing the protagonist’s transformation from frump to bombshell.